Airbus Helicopters has announced the successful completion of the certification programme of cold-weather testing of the H160 in northern Finland.

The company deployed the first production aircraft to Rovaniemi in Lapland in February when temperatures plunged to –37°C (–35°F). The main objective of this second campaign was to confirm the behaviour of the twin-engine H160 in extremely cold conditions in the production configuration, as the first test campaign in Canada in early 2017 was performed with a prototype aircraft.

Operations took place from the base of Babcock Scandinavian AirAmbulance, which flies Airbus H145 helicopters for emergency medical services (EMS) customers in the region, including Finland’s FinnHEMS and the Regional Government of Åland also in Finland.

The campaign included over 20 hours of flight tests as well as a lengthy series of ground tests and a 13-hour ferry flight from Airbus Helicopters’ Marignane base to the test site.

Babcock is the global launch customer for the H160 and will be the first operator to receive the new model. Its fleet of H160s is destined for EMS and other critical service missions starting in Europe and to be deployed progressively across Babcock’s bases worldwide.

The first production H160 made its first flight in December 2018.